Over the week we go through a lot of content - news and blog posts, how tos and conceptual posts on the state of the internet. Every Sunday we share some of our favourites with you.

Check out the links and let us know in the comments if you have any questions or if you read any great posts this week!

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Lara

I often see people complaining about ads on Facebook and Twitter but they don’t bother me. Why? Aside from the fact that they are tools I want to use for my own business, I also know as a business owner that businesses need to make money, and Facebook and Twitter are businesses. These are free services we enjoy, most of the other channels we have to deal with ads on we pay for! (newspapers, tv, etc)

Over the week we go through a lot of content - news and blog posts, how tos and conceptual posts on the state of the internet. Every Sunday we share some of our favourites with you.

Check out the links and let us know in the comments if you have any questions or if you read any great posts this week!

***

Lara

E-newsletters and Facebook ads are two things that I’ve been really concentrating on lately - there are so many interesting things to learn about how to use them to grow your business.

One of the most important things to remember when sending newsletters is to have a good subject line. If your subject line is boring, who is going to open your email? Here are 25 tips for great subject lines.

Amy Porterfield is my go to Facebook expert and she shared a lot of interesting information on Facebook ads in one of her recent podcasts. The podcast itself as well as the step by step Facebook ad pdf she created explain how and why to try out Facebook’s power editor and how to target ads in the newsfeed only instead of also in the sidebar.

Spin Sucks has a weekly post called Gin and Topics I check religiously every weekend and whenever I see a video I think is hilarious I send it to to Gini in the hopes she’ll include it. This week she did! Corn chips are hilarious.

Karen

Ellen DeGeneres makes me laugh. A lot. She’s also using social media brilliantly to promote her show and be funny for us for longer than an hour a day, five days a week. The story of the game app she’s launched is really interesting to me. It’s wildly successful (understandable given her fame) and is tied to her show only in that she plays the game on the show. Businesses can apply this kind of thinking to their own new media strategies by looking at ways to connect and stay on the minds of customers (and it doesn’t necessarily have to be an app).

It’s easy to make missteps when you first start out using social tools or setting up your website. Darren Rowse (ProBlogger) laid out his own mistakes regarding domain names. I’ve made some of these mistakes and the news is good from Darren’s perspective: they don’t mean you can’t be successful!

One technique for getting traffic to your blog/website is to be controversial. However, as a long-term strategy, it truly isn’t sustainable. I’ve written posts expressing my views about various controversies before and it’s draining. I will only do that if I feel very strongly about something. Otherwise, it’s not worth my time or energy. However, as a business user, it’s important to think about the points Mark Schaefer made, as well as the possible impact on your business.

Though it may be tempting some days to walk away from the internet for a good long time, it’s not something I am likely to do. It was so good to read Paul Miller’s conclusions about how it went when he stayed off the internet for one year.

Over the week we go through a lot of content - news and blog posts, how tos and conceptual posts on the state of the internet. Every Sunday we share some of our favourites with you.

Check out the links and let us know in the comments if you have any questions or if you read any great posts this week!

***

Lara

There was a lot of sadness this week, and the ability for social media to spread a message faster than ever before was very apparent. Karen and I were at a conference in Toronto listening to a speaker when we found out. I had a family member running in the marathon. Within a very short amount of time people had posted on his Facebook wall that they had been in touch and he was fine. Finding out that quickly was an amazing relief and couldn’t have happened without social media - I had no connection to any of the people who ended up being my source of information.

While our feeds were full of sadness and anger, one of the things that struck me as hopeful and good were the positive messages that were also being shared. Social media brings us the big news, and the little stories of hope all at the same time.

Have you ever heard someone say that they prefer the term “return on influence” rather than “return on investment” as a way to measure the effectiveness of social media? It’s usually a way of saying that they don’t know how to measure or they truly see social media as being about creating brand awareness more than anything else. But, as this study shows, many are using social media for lead generation - not just branding.

Over the week we go through a lot of content - news and blog posts, how tos and conceptual posts on the state of the internet. Every Sunday we share some of our favourites with you.

Check out the links and let us know in the comments if you have any questions or if you read any great posts this week!

***

Lara

Facebook launched gifts in the Fall - it’s a way for you to send actual gifts to your Facebook friends. It was launched only in the US and now they’ve sort of broadened it - people outside of the US can now send gifts TO the US. I sent one this week and it was easy and I was impressed by the selection of gifts and accompanying e-cards.

I think it’s an exciting move because the convenience of being able to send friends or colleagues a quick thank you gift has a LOT of potential. Hopefully it doesn’t take too long for it to be available to send within Canada too. For now it’s a great way to have a virtual coffee date with the folks we work with in the States.

It’s important to remember that social media isn’t all above the numbers. As important as it is to pay attention the numbers, making sure that those numbers are quality over quantity is key. Mitch Joel shared a really great example of a company that really believes in quality.

Karen

Crisis management in social media is a really hot topic because companies seem to land themselves in hot water on a regular basis. Danny Brown brings a different perspective to the conversation by saying that companies are causing hese crises - not social media. To me, this makes a lot of sense.

I have this crazy unfollow rate on my Twitter account. Almost 2/3 of the people who follow me then unfollow me later. I’m okay with this and I don’t care a great deal why, but my assumption is that it’s because I don’t follow them back. Mark Schaefer took it to his followers to find out what motivates them to unfollow someone.